


Unbecoming

by ravensandwritings



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Body Horror, Eldritch Horrors, F/M, Green vs Red, Horror, Lupin The Eternal, M/M, Madness, Mining metatextual Lupin films for fun and profit, Otherworldly beings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26383195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravensandwritings/pseuds/ravensandwritings
Summary: “You aren’t born a man, you become a man. The same is true of Lupin.” -- Green Vs Red
Relationships: Arsène Lupin III/Mine Fujiko, Jigen Daisuke/Arsène Lupin III
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31
Collections: Lupin III Big Bang 2020





	Unbecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Lupin Big Bang 2020.
> 
> Here is the beautiful companion art by [Hawkens](https://twitter.com/BrennerHawkins) / [Jigen Among the Stars](https://twitter.com/BrennerHawkins/status/1303728234618593280)

It was on their third heist that Goemon didn’t show. Lupin was confused: where was their third act, the dramatic reappearance of the man that existed outside of the passage of time? Goemon was a fossil, yes, but he was a consistent find at the end of every heist. He never simply didn’t show up. This wasn’t a fucking curtain call where someone’s understudy could get shoved out on stage at the last moment, unprepared and cold reading. This was Ishikawa Goemon, 13th of his name. You didn’t settle for the 13 ½th . That just wasn’t how it was done. You had him, or you had nothing.

Lupin had nothing. His molars were grinding down on nothing. 

Getting out by the skin of their teeth was possible, sure, but it wasn’t the same. Peeling out into the countryside with Zantetsuken sliced obstacles falling into the path of the cops on their heels meant Lupin's pursuers were emboldened, taking risks they wouldn’t dare with Goemon’s presence. The old man -- Inspector Zenigata -- was out for blood tonight, and Goemon gave him a clear shot to get it.

It took the Fiat’s hidden jets and some C4 explosives on a bridge to cut off the man’s pursuit. As the cop cars piled up in a heap behind him, metal shrieking again and again, Lupin finally felt satisfied. 

“You called him, right?” he asks, trying not to sound sulky as Jigen downshifted into something smoother, the ride easier now that there was no chance of real, meaningful pursuit.

“Yeah,” Jigen said, searching the ashtray for the freshest cigarette butt. 

“You want a fresh one?” Lupin asked as Lupin popped some crooked, nearly burned down stub in his mouth.

“Nah,” he said. “This is good enough for now.”

Lupin wasn’t sure why putting it that way set him ill at ease. But he tapped out a Gitane for himself, put his cigarette between his lips and lit it. As the heat of the smoke filled his lungs on his first drag, he rolled down the window and exhaled a gray flag as they drove away, the last sign of Lupin III as they vanished into the French countryside with nothing but open sky and green pastures greeting them.

God, it was beautiful here.

“Let’s hit the nearest safe house,” Lupin said, squinting when the ring hanging from the rearview mirror caught the light just right, dazzling him with refracted brilliance. It was gleaming platinum and its center stone was emerald, as green as his jacket -- rarer than diamonds and not artificially inflated in value because of the de Boers monopoly. A real treasure. The kind you matched to the ring on the hand of a mighty fine woman.

“You wanna lay low for a while?” Jigen asked, eyes still on the road. 

“Gotta fence the goods, get us some spending money,” Lupin said, and looked away from the ring and back to the road. “Good booze, some rest, let the heat die down.”

“Sounds good, boss.”

“Maybe we’ll find out why Goemon couldn’t be arsed to show up,” Lupin added, feeling something tighten in his gut. “Son of a bitch didn’t even call. I gave him a cellphone for a _reason_.”

“You know how he is,” Jigen chuckled dryly, before he tilted his head and peered out from the brim of his hat. His eyes were dark, almost black in the shadows. He moved his cigarette to the corner of his mouth with a flex of his lips. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Lupin sank deeper into his seat. He took another drag, and exhaled his anxieties with it.

What if he didn’t know?

+++

Fujiko showed up at the hideout as planned. They had dinner, as planned. He tried to get her naked, also as planned. 

As Jigen sunk deeper into the couch, Lupin slid his hands over Fujiko’s thighs, tracing the derringer hidden beneath her dress, tucked in a garter holster. It wass sexy as fuck, the feel of it, hard against his palm, knowing that if she wanted to, she could shoot him dead at any moment. 

She wouldn’t. Probably. Not knowing and inviting the risk was part of the fun. She couldn’t be tamed, no man would ever be her master. Lupin didn’t even want to try. 

There was an engagement ring hanging from his rearview mirror, but it would never be on her hand. He’d never even try to put it there. It wasn’t for her. It was for him. It was _his_ band, thick in its masculine sizing, emerald cachabon cut simple but solid. It would look so wrong on the delicate fingers that she was sliding into his mouth.

Lupin forgot all about rings and engagements as he sucked happily on Fujiko’s fingers, tasting the sticky sweetness of maraschino cherries plucked from his Old-Fashioned. The cocktail was left half-drunk forgotten on the coffee table in the living room. 

“Mmm, Lupin,” she cooed to him as she straddled his hips. “What do you have for me tonight?”

 _Well, if you wanna look in my pocket, there’s something there you might like_. He couldn’t say the words when they were muffled by her fingers pressed down on his tongue. They trapped his tongue and stilled his voice. 

“Ah, ah, I already know about _that_ ,” she said, and wiggled above him. Each time her weight shifted he felt sparks light up his veins, his stomach suddenly light and his limbs warm. Hard cock trapped with only the thin barrier of her panties and the damning thickness of his slacks between him and Nirvana, Lupin mewled under her like a needy pup.

“What do you _have_ for me,” she asked again, licking her lips until they were as red and wet as the maraschino cherry. “Is it shiny? Precious? What did you bring to me?”

What had he brought? There was cash aplenty, stacked up in thick bills on the table for counting and division. She’d get her share - and probably a chunk of his. That’s how it worked; she took more than she ever gave. 

Why did he put up with it, Lupin asked himself. They’d done it for years, would do it for years more if Fujiko had any say (and she had _all the say_.) Nothing changed. Shouldn’t they… change?

What was Lupin, if not adaptable? The greatest thief who ever lived couldn’t just play this same role, day in and day out and be a slave to this woman’s sharp nails, her ever hungry mouth. 

“You’ll just take what you want,” Lupin said once she removed her cherry-sweet fingers from his mouth.

“You have no idea,” Fujiko said, as she leaned down and kissed him. Her lips were sweeter than the cherries and just as juicy. She thrust her tongue into his mouth, stealing back the taste of maraschino and then leaving him wanting when it retreated just as quickly.

Lupin’s eyelids grew heavy. Knock out lipstick? Something in the taste of it, sweet but less vibrant than the cherries. Almost like almonds, but not quite. Something subtler still than that. 

“Be careful, Lupin,” she said, running a thumb along his kiss-swollen lips. “If you disappoint me, I’ll just take it all.”

“Won’t you do that anyway?” Lupin asked, words feeling thick and heavy in his mouth, tongue going flat under the weight of them.

Fujiko’s teeth flashed, white beyond red. “No. Not unless you give me no choice. You better not keep me waiting, Lupin.”

Lupin’s eyelids grew heavy and his ardor grew weak. Still, he had a moment’s thought before he sank into blissful sleep: _was she talking to this Lupin, right here, or another?_

+++

When he woke it was the dead of night. He was sweaty but shivering, his dreamless sleep having been disturbed by some other force. His racing heart, the fear that loomed in from all sides with the ever deepening shadows. It was shapeless, formless, sourceless - this dread simply clung to him like the sheen of sweat that had bloomed on his skin.

He got up. Fujiko was gone -- long gone, from the looks of it. The living room was now empty, the television off and half the money was gone. Fujiko had taken her share, and then most of his. He’d have to give Jigen his third, and take what was left to plan the next job, prepare for the next heist. Jigen handled the mundanities - the food, the water, basic needs. That’s what he did. He took care of things.

Grabbing his cigarettes from his jacket pocket, he walked out into the crisp night air and tapped out a smoke. He lit up, breathing in deep and exhaling gray into the black. The moon was growing thick, and it was the only light left in the sky. You could see the stars out here, though, which he couldn’t say about Paris or Rome or New York or Tokyo. 

He walked over to the Fiat and leaned back against the hood as he smoked in silence. There was no bustle of the city here. Tokyo’s traffic never really stopped, and the people were packed in like sardines. Paris hadn’t been that way, and the space out here stretched forever. They’d have to drive another mile or five from this hidden farmhouse by an apple orchard just to find another human being. 

An apple fresh from the tree would have been a delicious treat, but the orchard had been left to grow wild in a caretaker’s absence. Despite knowing that, Lupin pushed himself from the Fiat’s hood and sauntered over.

As he came closer, cutting down the path that had been worn from the gravel drive to the orchard itself, he could smell apples. Not just fresh apples, heavy on the branch. When he stepped down and something squelched obscenely beneath his foot, he realized what it must be.

Rotted apples littered the ground, carpeting the place in a sticky, decaying layer. The closer he got, the worse the smell, so he stopped at the fringes, fumbling for his phone.

When he turned on the flashlight, he could see it more clearly -- red apples turning brown on the earth, pockmarked with wormy black holes. Each was in varying states of decay as their skin blistered and burst, oozing rotten pulp where they had fallen. They blanketed the space between each tree. Sickly green apples, unripened, hung from the branches here and there. The barely-grown apples were just out of reach.

Lupin turned to walk back toward the Fiat. Apples that young weren’t worth pursuing, even without piles of rotting fruit before them. Especially not with his good boots on. The Fiat might have some snacks left in it, so he didn’t have to rummage around in the house and possibly wake Jigen. If Jigen woke, he’d certainly have to soothe him over the missing money, and Lupin was far more comfortable in the cramped car than he was with having that discussion.

He searched the glovebox, scanned the back seat and dug about the floor trash to see if there was one single thing that wasn’t befouled, stale to the point of using it as mortar, or any other condition that would render it inedible. When he came up out of the wheel well he flopped back in his seat.

“Bupkis,” he said to the night sky. 

Then Lupin realized it was much too dark. With the moon so full, the Fiat should have been much brighter, inside. This one didn’t have tinted windows. Surely, there was enough light to at least gleam off the engagement ring, sending little green sparkles off it when it moved as the car bucked and creaked as Lupin crawled about it like a pig hunting truffles.

It wasn’t there.

Lupin searched the dash and came up with nothing but wrappers and empty cigarette packs. The ashtray gave up only stale butts, and there had been no evidence it was on the floor. 

That didn’t stop him from opening all the doors, turning on the ceiling light, and searching high and low, throwing trash out each side, growing more and more frantic as he reached for more, and still finding nothing.

The ring was _his_ , solely _his_ , and he needed it. He needed it to remind him, to anchor him, to never forget what he left behind to be _Lupin_. 

When his search yielded nothing, Lupin sat back on his heels, all but falling out of the Fiat. He sat there, staring up at the sky as the stars winked out. The night was getting deeper as they died, one by one by one.

++

Jigen was waiting for him in the pre-dawn light; the blinds were drawn, and the sky was still a blue-black, almost untouched by the sun. Soon, rays of light would crest over the hills and bring back the daylight. Maybe then, under the safety of sunlight, he’d find the ring. Maybe he just kept missing it in the dark, when the sun couldn’t reach it to make it gleam.

Maybe there had never been a ring at all. What did Lupin need with an engagement ring, anyway? Especially for a man’s hand. He’d never have a use for it -- who was he going to give it to, Jigen?

To his credit, Jigen would make a fine wife. He was up cooking breakfast, smoking over the hot pan where bacon and eggs audibly sizzled. The smell of melting pork fat and crisping meat drew him over to the kitchen, hovering just behind Jigen’s shoulder.

“Ah, you’re such a good partner!” he murmured.

“Don’t forget that,” Jigen said as he nudged the bacon about, watching it brown.

“Never, Jigen, never!” Lupin said.

Loyal and true were two words that defined Jigen Daiske. Everybody knew that where he was found, Lupin would also follow. Even if he broke off to work a job on his own, something would go wrong, and eventually Lupin would come to save him. They worked best together, each one complimenting the other.

“You were up all night,” Jigen noted, not looking up from his task.

“Not all night,” Lupin said.

“Enough of it,” Jigen retorted. “Half the cash’s gone, too.”

“Yeah, well…”

“She’ll never be satisfied, Lupin,” Jigen said. 

“Should she settle for anything less than she deserves?” Lupin retorted, before he stepped back under the force of Jigen’s glower. “I’m gonna shower, okay?”

“Whatever,” Jigen grumbled, and let him walk away.

Lupin was grateful for the sound of falling water and the feeling of water on his skin. It was the realest thing he’d felt in a day. Real water sluiced down his neck, between his shoulder blades, and the cleft of his ass. Real fingers scrubbed at a real scalp, and shampoo really stung his eyes.

Real ridges of scar tissue on his chest. 

Lupin stopped as he felt it again. Had it always been there, that branching, spiraling thing? Keloid ridges framed each shape, a brand set into his skin. He ran his and over it again, and asked himself if this had always been a part of him, or if he’d just forgotten to peel off a piece of a complicated costume.

He scratched at it a moment, trying to find the seams where latex and spirit gum would give way and show the real Lupin underneath. He pinched and he scraped and he pulled. All that came away was blood under his fingernails.

As he stared at the hands, he wondered what he was becoming as the water turned pink and trickled down his chest, little droplets of diluted blood swept down the drain.

When he was finally done, he put himself back together, the sleek leather jacket in it’s deep forest green comforting. It was a good color, when it wasn’t on unripened apples or oozing rotting pulp. It was a growing color, a renewal. It felt a little big in the shoulders, but he was certain he’d come to enjoy the fit of it over time.

The scratches under his shirt stung, claiming otherwise.

“I’m going to go out for a supply run,” he called out to Jigen as he dressed. “Get me a list of things we need.”

“Right, boss,” Jigen called back. 

Lupin did his hair up last, smoothing it back under his fingers, pomade turning it matte and holding the fall of his unruly bangs out of his face. He needed to see clearly, for the things he was going to do.

Once he was put together, he stared at himself for a moment. His eyes were hazel in the light filtering in from the frosted bathroom window. Strange; he’d always thought of them as a more golden brown, but today he noticed flecks of green and blue. 

Maybe he’d never just really _looked_ at himself, _realized_ what he looked like.

Lupin turned away from the mirror. He didn’t need to worry about his looks, regardless. He was Lupin III, the one and only. Nobody looked like him.

Nobody.

++

Lupin arrived back at the safe house later than absolutely necessary, and started to unload the kit; food, toiletries, some gizmos and scrap metal to start to fashion new tools with. This wasn’t one of the best prepared safe houses; there was no secret lab or workshop hidden under this one. Just the basics in the barely standing garage that the Fiat parked before.

The garage was where he spent the most of the rest of his day, dismantling his Walther P38 pistol for cleaning and maintenance, finding a sort of peace in the ritual and rhythm of the work. This felt right, in his hands, like he was capable of at least this making sense, one part after the other. This was a solid connection to the real world, a tool that changed reality in the most simple of ways: it took life out of this world. That was all it did, all it was made to do. It knew what it was, and what it should be, and there were no complications at all.

The daylight hours bled away too fast for his liking, and forced him to retreat from the garage and its poor lighting to the house again. Jigen was parked where he usually was-- lanky legs slung up on the couch, tucked against the armrest. Lupin volunteered to make dinner, pounding cutlets flat and frying up tonkatsu for dinner. Jigen ate without complaint. So long as meat was on his plate, he didn’t complain. Goemon’s steamed vegetables and tofu had no place at a table Jigen was sitting at.

Jigen washed the dishes while Lupin took his turn at the television. Something gnawed at the back of his mind. He’d done something yesterday, but he couldn’t recall what. He’d lost something. It ate at him, the back of his mind, but he resolved to ignore it and sank into channel surfing instead.

“What were you working on in the garage all day?” Jigen said as the channels bounced by, repeating one after the other.

“Just cleaning some things up,” Lupin told him. “Nothing much.”

“You got a plan for the next job?” 

“Yeah,” Lupin said, and grumbled, “Don’t bring Fujiko.”

“Hah!” Jigen’s grin spread wide, scraggly teeth yellow and flat. “Been telling you that for years. Never thought I’d see it stick.”

“I love her! I just-- we need more money, yeah? To get to the next big job,” Lupin said.

“You’re the one who keeps the bitch around, not me,” Jigen replied, his eyes narrowing. “You got too much going on with your women.”

It wasn’t until after he and Jigen found a soccer match, that he wondered what Jigen had said ‘women’. There was just Fujiko, after all, and she should be more than enough for any man. 

After soccer came the news, and then Jigen shuffled off to bed while Lupin just kept flipping through the channels until they blurred into late night static, the fuzzy colors blending together as the local channels went offline. Soon static was eating up his vision.

When the television was finally off, when there were no more distractions to occupy his tired mind, Lupin realized: he’d lost the ring. _His_ ring, nobody else’s ring, the _engagement_ ring. It matched a ruby-set band on the finger of another woman. 

_Women_ , Jigen had said. His _women._

Lupin went into his own bedroom and checked his things. If the ring wasn’t still in the Fiat, he had to have taken it down and just not realized it. He searched his battered suitcase, his spare clothes, everything he had brought with him into the house. All it yielded was some extra lockpicks, dirty underwear, an unopened box of condoms, and spare toothbrushes.

Standing there in the mess of his things, he realized there was one other idea he hadn’t considered: Did Jigen _take_ the ring? If so, why? It had hung there for weeks without comment, like a peaceful bystander to their wild life. It couldn’t offend, it was just -- _there._

It didn’t stop him from slipping out of his room and over to Jigen’s. Padding on cat-silent feet, he opened the door without a single sound and peered inside. 

Jigen was not there. 

Icy fear slid down Lupin’s spine. He straightened up, standing in Jigen’s room in the dark of the night and remembered what it felt like in the Fiat the night before; the shadows were too dark and the moon should have waxed to fullness tonight. Why wasn’t there light against the curtains? Something, anything that gave even the slightest illumination to make the shadows shift instead of only deepen.

Slipping back out of the room, Lupin searched the house. Jigen was nowhere to be found.

Jigen didn’t leave. Jigen was Lupin’s anchor in the world, the thing that kept him tethered in his wild, freewheeling life. Always at his side, the gruff, grounded counterpoint to Lupin’s chaos.

With the house empty, Lupin turned to look at the front door. He stood in the middle of the silent living room and waited for a moment. Surely, Jigen would come inside from a smoke. Something would bring him back.

The door never opened. Lupin wanted to scream, but his mouth didn’t open, either. 

++

Time had passed in that dark house, but Lupin had lost track of it. There were no clocks to watch, no movement of the moonlight across the curtains. The night seemed impossibly deep and irrefutably long, stretching beyond the bounds of what time was until the moment to moment he existed seemed stretched so thin he could see through it to a whole other life, a whole other time, with sunshine and regular work and the bustle of Tokyo and the sound of everyone else talking like he did.

Lupin recoiled from the shadows that should have been his refuge. Was he not a thief, who felt safe wrapped in darkness? Who was he, then, if not Lupin III -- impossible thief, master criminal, the wild card in every deck.

Didn’t he have another name?

Time stretched thinner still, and Lupin was certain either it would give or he would. Before he could feel the elasticity of the moments give one last tremble he yelled out, finally finding his voice, “I am here! I am Lupin, and I am here!”

No one answered, but time compressed around him, packing him down into the single moment as he stood before the door he did not remember walking to. 

It opened into a French countryside, where all the stars had winked out, and only the moon’s single eye hung baleful in the sky. It watched him as he took one step back to the other, knowing what he had to do. He had to get to the Fiat. The ring would be inside. He would put it on, and Lupin would be no more.

Steps came faster, until he was running up the impossible hill, steeper and steeper as he climbed past the orchard and its rotten fruit, past the garage, with its windows glowing bright with barely contained light.

When he reached the top of the hill that had not been there before, he found the Fiat. It sat with its offensively bland, yellow paint job turned paler, like lemon pith instead of lemon peel. He reached out for the handle, but the door opened on it’s own.

“Took you long enough,” said Jigen as he poured himself out of the car, one long leg after the other as he turned in the driver’s seat. “You ready to go?”

“Go where?” Lupin asked.

“Home to Paris,” Jigen said. “Haven’t you had enough of a rest here?”

Lupin looked at him; beyond Jigen the Fiat’s interior was as black as pitch, sliding sluggishly in shadow behind him. It warped and moved, but Lupin could not tell how. He stared uncomprehending into the space melting around Jigen, empty of the light that the moon gave off.

“A rest? No, that’s -- that’s not why we’re here.”

“Isn’t it?” Jigen asked.

“No!”

“Then why are we here?”

“I came to look for something,” Lupin said, scanning him again. Then he realized there was a single thing that caught the moonlight; it wasn’t hanging from the rearview mirror -- no, it was on a slender gold chain that looped around Jigen’s neck. His engagement ring, emerald and bright, pulsed against the darkness.

“This,” Jigen said, cupping his hand around it, but never touching it. “You’re looking for this.”

“...yes?” The answer came, but uncertain of it’s rightness. Lupin had been looking for the ring. But for what purpose? An engagement ring was useless if it didn't have a mate.

“You know Fujiko won’t share,” Jigen said, and his teeth flashed as he brought a cigarette to his mouth. There was the snap-hiss of a Zippo lighter, a single point of light that cast Jigen into stark relief, shadows hugging his cheekbones, retreating to the hollows of his eyes as he lit his cigarette. They rushed back out as soon as the Zippo closed, and the only light left was from the engagement ring hung around Jigen’s neck. 

Lupin swallowed a scream.

“I don’t share, either. One woman is bad enough. Two?” Jigen paused to take a drag, and exhaled white smoke. “Not happening, pal.”

Lupin suddenly found his voice. “Give me the ring.” 

“Who are you?” Jigen asked instead.

“Lupin! I’m Lupin!”

“And what is Lupin?”

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“What is Lupin?”

“He-- I don’t know! I don’t know,” Lupin said, voice cracking over the last syllable. “God help me, I don’t know.”

“Lupin,” Jigen said as he stood up, “is a _thief_ . He doesn’t _ask_ for something. He _takes_ it.”

“I can’t-- I’m not-- I’m not--” the man said, feeling something moving under his skin again, rejecting him, denying him. “I’m not Lupin! I’m _Yasuo!_ ”

Clarity hit him like a bolt from heaven, and Yasuo felt tears break from his eyes, spilling down his face. 

“Who’s Yasuo?” Jigen asked.

“I’m Yasuo.”

“Who’s Yasuo!” 

“Me! I’m Yasuo! I’m not Lupin, I’m Yasuo, I -- I work in Tokyo, my grandmother is very old, very ill. I need to get back. My girlfriend--”

Jigen exhaled smoke in his face, and Yasuo choked on his words. It burned more than it should, the nerves in the tender, mucosal tissues suddenly alight with searing pain. 

“Shut up,” Jigen said, and put out a booted foot, kicking Yasuo in the chest and sending him staggering backward. “You’re nothing. You’re less than nothing. Goemon spared you, but don’t think I’m that merciful.”

Goemon had left, he realized. Goemon left as he always does, but he never came back. He had been denied as Lupin once, then twice in the bed with Fujiko, and now finally, by the third force behind Lupin: Jigen Daisuke rebuked him here and now.

Jigen tore the chain from around his neck, and held it out before him. “Are you thief enough to take this from me, at least? Show me that you were worth half a damn, even an ounce of attention. All this time _wasted_ on you. Time we don’t get back.”

Yasuo swung out wildly, grasping at the empty air as the space between them distorted. Clawing at nothingness, Yasuo tried again and again to take the ring from Jigen’s outstretched hand, but could not find purchase. He missed, time and time again till his arms were getting heavy and cold sweat soaked his hair.

“Look at you! You’re pathetic! Just another whipped bitch.” Jigen spat at him as space throbbed and pulsed around him. “How did you ever think you could be something bigger than yourself? How did you ever think your life would suddenly have meaning if you were Lupin?”

“I don’t know!” Yasuo cried.

“You’re nothing!”

“Just -- give it to me,” he finally sobbed. “Give me the ring and I’ll go, I’ll go and I’ll never look back.”

“No,” Jigen said. “Nothing is given to Lupin. Everything is stolen.”

“But I’m not Lupin,” Yasuo said.

“Then get the fuck out of my sight!”

Suddenly all the lights in the sky were blazing, every star, every shimmer of the Milky Way. Everything stretched before him in its unending dance and he saw something he knew he should not. He could not name its shape or give tell to its size, but it was there, pouring out of Jigen but still _of_ Jigen, looming in the dark all around him.

“ _GO!”_ roared out of the night.

Then Yasuo heard a police siren in the distance, and Yasuo did what any fool would do: he ran, looking for protection.

++

  
  


“What’s that you got there? You bringing us the big man?” 

Lupin -- _Yasuo_ \-- was jogged awake as a car door opened and then slammed shut again. He groaned, head spinning. He didn’t know where he was, but he knew where he wasn’t. He wasn’t on that hill, with darkness pouring out of the Fiat, with that man in green -- if Lupin could even be called a man. But Lupin was no more. He was Yasuo. He was safe in this police cruiser, smelling the lingering smoke of Shinsei cigarettes, lighter than the mellow Gitanes he’d been smoking since he left Tokyo behind him.

“No, couldn’t be so lucky,” said Inspector Zenigata as he opened the back door. His hands were like manacles, clapped on to Yasuo’s arm and hauling him bodily out of the car. “Just another fake. Found the son of a bitch stealing clothing out of somebody’s yard out in the backcountry. Waste of my time.”

Zenigata marched Yasuo past the rank and file French police and into the station, through the unmarked halls, all in the offensively boring color of bureaucracy beige. 

When they came to the interrogation room it was done in jailhouse gray, Yasuo was almost relieved. Zenigata handcuffed him to the table in short order, all curt profiling and routine work.

The room was dim at first. There was the typical two-way glass that you’d see in old police films, bare concrete walls, and of course, the uncomfortable chairs on both sides of the table. Zenigata slung his coat over the back of the chair before him, and pulled it out.

“Just what the hell did you think you were doing?” Zenigata asked.

“I--” Yasuo tried to find words, but Zenigata shook his head.

“Rhetorical question.” Zenigata tapped out a cigarette and put it between his lips. “I know exactly what you were doing. Being a goddamn fool. Leaving your workaday life and thinking you can be something greater than yourself. You had a fiancee. A grandmother. You had a job and a family and you could have been something greater than you were. But ah, who is truly a man if our reach doesn’t exceed our grasp, yeah?”

Zenigata laughed, though it was a rough and sad one. He took a drag on his cigarette and sat back in the chair, tipping his head back as he exhaled a plume of smoke above him. It lingered in the air like a pall.

“You can never go back to the way things were, now,” Zenigata was saying between exhales of cigarette smoke. It seemed to go on too long to Yasuo - he’d smoked a Shinsei, they were short burners, a quick hot smoke you caught on the average salaryman’s lunch break before eating. The cigarette didn’t shorten like it should, though, and it didn’t fall quite like it should when Zenigata tapped it off over the ashtray. 

“Was it worth it?” Zenigata asked.

Yasuo blinked and hazarded an answer, hoping it was an actual question this time. “What, sir?”

Zenigata turned the single table lamp on Yasuo’s face, blinding him for a moment. “Was it worth it?” he repeated. 

Yasuo’s tongue stilled in his mouth. A few weeks as Lupin as opposed to years of mediocrity was worth anything. To be something other than Yasuo, trapped in his shitty job, with his overbearing girlfriend, watching his grandmother slowly waste away -- anything had to be better than that.

His mouth wouldn’t form the word ‘yes.’ It just made a low, animal sound of pain. His pain, because his eyes were burning and he couldn’t look away from the light.

Zenigata appeared at the periphery of his vision, and he was burning too, eyes too bright -- not the moons and stars that had flowed out of the Fiat with Jigen like a cloak, not the shadows that had resolved themselves into the form of a man. The light denied all darkness, fought back shadows, and peeled him open, layer by layer by layer as his skin blistered and popped like the rotting apples of the orchards.

“It’s never worth it, my boy,” Zenigata said, mouth full of white smoke and eyes like suns. “There are places for people like you. Places that they go. They don’t come back. Nothing of you is left, Yasuo. You let him hollow you out and steal everything of value. There’s nothing to go back to, now. No one to go back to.”

Yasuo wanted to scream, but his tongue was melting in his mouth, running in rivulets down his jaw and trickling into his throat. It sloshed over his lips in a steady stream of unspoken denials and promises that he didn’t mean it, this wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t what he wanted.

“I know,” Zenigata said to the words Yasuo was trying to scream. “Better than you think.”

Then Yasuo did not think at all.

++

Jigen pulled into a hidden garage in the oldest part of Paris, where things were full of shadows and the years had long made things blur together. He got out of the Fiat, walked to the door, and then into the safe house.

It smelled of mellow Gitanes and skin musk, and as soon as Jigen rounded the corner he sank into the welcoming arms of his partner. It was a brief squeeze, reassuring and solid, before Jigen was free to hang his hat and drop into the chair at the table.

“You have a good time?” he asked.

Lupin did not look back at him. “No. Not really.”

“Why do you keep bothering, then?” Jigen said, as he let his head fall back, hair falling free of his face. “It’s a pain in my ass, babysitting these chumps. None of them are ever going to last. You’re never going to be free. None of us are.”

“Why does Lupin do anything?” Lupin asked him as he turned back to the kitchen counter, making sandwiches for two. “Because someone has to attempt the impossible.”

“No they don’t,” Jigen groused, but there was no real anger in it. “Seriously, can’t you be satisfied?”

Lupin turned back to his friend and smiled, eyes full of stars: “Never in a million years. Now get some beer out of the fridge, and tell me what you’ve been up to.”


End file.
